I am postponing my August "vacation" from commenting about the immigration policies of our nation's Chief Executive by one day in order to share a frightening July 30 article by Thom Hartman on alternet.org suggesting that Donald Trump might very well at some point suspend all freedom in America by declaring martial law, "postponing" the 2020 election, defying the courts and assuming full powers of a dictator, based on the template of the way he has been treating immigrants.

What makes this article so frightening is that it is based on an interview with Tony Schwartz who ghost wrote Donald Trump's book Art ofthe Dead, spent a good deal of Time with Trump and knows him well. As the article explains in chilling detail, Trump has a dictator's ambitions, and his authoritarian use of power against brown immigrants could be only the beginning of what he might have in store for all Americans as well. The link is:

If and when our politicians finally find the courage to initiate impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump, which could be becoming more and more likely as his abuses against immigrants - and our democracy - continue to pile up almost with each passing day or week, one of the impeachment articles might very well include his horrific abuses against detained immigrant children, at least as alleged in the latest Huffington Post report.

These allegations include forced drugging of children, something reminiscent of Stalinist Russia; and, according to a court affidavit from a detained 16-year-old girl who alleges that border patrol guards kicked her throughout the night, forcing girls to strip naked in front of the guards.

Is this the United States of America, or is this a Nazi concentration camp? For the Huffpost report, see:

With each new attack on non-white immigrants and allegation of abuse of power on the part of Donald Trump, the "I". Impeachment, word keeps surfacing more and more in public discussion - with regard to immigration policy specifically, not only other issues which are beyond the scope of ilw.com discussion topics and which I will not go into here. See:

The topic of impeachment over immigration has, very understandably, taken on new significance and urgency as a result of the horrendous damage and suffering caused to up to 3,000 young children and their families by Trump's inhuman "zero tolerance" family separation, which Trump finally reversed in the face of opposition and outrage from many of his own supporters, including his own wife, First Lady Melania Trump, but has not yet given up on trying to defend.

This barbaric policy, which is only one aspect of a widespread attack on all immigrants, legal as well as unauthorized, by the Trump administration, has drawn international condemnation as an alleged crime against humanity and violation of both US and international laws against torture. For more on this topic, see:

I am not here expressing an opinion on whether Trump should or should not be impeached over his war on brown immigrants. But this subject is worth serious study, as it becomes clearer and clearer with each of Trump's latest racial attacks on immigrants that impeachment may be the only way of preserving the non- racially discriminatory immigration system that America has had for the past half century, and preventing a return to the bigoted framework and ideology of the "Nordics" - only 1924 "national origins" immigration act which Trump's AG Jeff Sessions praised so highly as a Senator only three years ago, and which top immigration advisers such as Stephen Miller are also taking our system back in the direction of.

Indeed, impeachment may, very arguably, be the only way of saving America's democracy itself from the various immigration and non-immigration related assaults by Trump and his administration, which Professor John Shattuck of the Harvard Kennedy School, who has a long record of supporting human rights as a private lawyer, professor and government official, describes in his powerful February 23 article:
How Democracy in America can Survive Donald Trump

I recommend this article as essential summer reading to anyone who cares about preserving our democracy in the "Donald Trump Era".

Beginning August 6, I will be taking the rest of August off from commenting on ilw.com about Trump's immigration agenda in order to do further research the impeachment issue, on which not only the future of our immigration system as we know it, but of our freedom and democracy themselves could very well depend.

I wish all ilw.com readers a good month of August. See you in September!

In a series of tweets on July 29, Donald Trump once again showed the mind and the tactics of a dictator rather than the leader of a free country by:

First, renewing his vicious attacks on innocent immigrant children whose only "crime" was being from Central America rather than "Countries like Norway" (to quote his infamous January 11 racial slur against non-white immigrants) and whom his administration brutally tore away from their parents and subjected to horrendous abuse, as is now becoming more and more evident in hundreds of federal court affidavits.

In a tweet that showed no remorse whatsoever for the terrible suffering that Trump inflicted on between 2,000 and 3,000 innocent children, many of whom will most likely be scarred for life by the experience, and some of whom many never be reunited with their parents, Trump wrote:

"Please understand, there are consequences when people cross our Border illegally, whether they have children or not - and many are just using children for their own sinister purposes. Congress must act on fixing the DUMBEST & WORST immigration laws anywhere in the world. Vote 'R'"

What were the "sinister purposes" that these Central American immigrants were supposedly"using their children for"?

The answer is that they were seeking asylum in the US, according to our laws, from the same kind of horrendous gang violence that Trump loudly condemns when the victims are white Americans instead of brown foreign citizens.

That is what he obviously means when he says that America has the dumbest and worst immigration laws anywhere in the world.

Is this the language of a leader who respects the rule of law and the most fundamental humanitarian principles of a democratic society? This is the language of that tyrants use.

It is the language of state terror, of rulers who tear thousands of children away from their parents and lock them in cages because their skin is not white enough. See McGill University Professor Jacob Levy, writing for the Niskanen Center:

Second, Trump showed that when he calls America's immigration laws the "dumbest and worst" in the world, he is not only referring to what he calls "catch and release" policies for asylum seekers, and the legal provisions protecting immigrant children from prolonged detention and requiring that they be treated humanely, but to the entire system of non- racially discriminatory legal immigration which has allowed tens of millions of people to come to the United States with valid visas and green cards from countries which Trump despises as "shithole countries" because they are located in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean instead of white Europe.

In a second July 29 tweet, Trump once again attempted to bully and browbeat Congress into cutting back family green cards and eliminating the Diversity visa entirely, both of which have been especially helpful to immigrants from outside Europe, in favor of "merit-based" (a euphemism of whites only) immigration; and approving funding for his totalitarian border Wall against brown immigrants (with its ominous echoes of the Communist Berlin Wall and even more horrible Warsaw Ghetto Wall, as well as the Wall which Hungary's autocrat Victor Orban has just constructed against Middle Eastern and African immigrants while plastering his country with antisemitic posters) by threatening (again) to shut down the federal government if Trump doesn't get his way:
"I would be willing to 'shut down' government if the Democrats do not give us the votes for Border Security which includes the Wall! Must get rid of Lottery, Catch & Release etc. and finally go to system of immigration based on MERIT! We need great people coming into our Country!"

If there were any doubt down as to what shade of skin color Trump has in mind when he talks about only letting "great people" into America, one only has to look at his recent racist tweets accusing non-European immigrants of making that continent "lose" its "culture", or his openly white supremacist "Blood and Soil" type speech (Nazi Blut und Boden) in Warsaw, Poland a year ago.

And, third, in another clear, and ominous, example how using tyrannical methods to make America's immigration system white once again, as it was before the 1965 reform which many in Trump's party have never accepted and have been trying to undermine and reverse almost from the time it was enacted, are threatening the basic freedoms of the American people, not just immigrants; Trump also launched another attack on America's free press, in this case specifically the New York Times.

The Hill reports no less than four such tweets in one day, July 29, alone:

Here is one of them:
"When the media - driven insane by their Trump Derangement Syndrome - reveals internal deliberations of our government, it truly puts the lives of many, not just journalists, at risk. Very unpatriotic! Freedom of the press also comes with a responsibility to report the news..."

In other words, anyone who criticizes the Leader, Donald Trump, is unpatriotic, a traitor, an enemy of the people. This is what journalism was like under Hitler, under Stalin and under Mao. It is what journalism is like today under Trump's alleged election supporter and helper Vladimir Putin, the independent counsel's investigation into whose activities on behalf of Trump are under such ferocious attack from Trump and his supporters.

If future historians one day write the sorry history of how America lost its freedom and was turned into a totalitarian dictatorship, that story will most surely begin with Donald Trump's attacks on and savage repression against non-white immigrants, including not only those who may enter or stay in the US without proper authorization, but also those who seek to come to this country or have arrived here through legal channels, as provided by our statutes and regulations.

Recently, CNN obtained a copy of a Justice Department email to the U.S. Attorneys offices that updates instructions on describing alien status in press releases.

It requires them to use the term, “illegal alien,” when the unlawful presence of an alien is an established fact. If the lawfulness of an alien’s status is uncertain, they are required to use a reference to his country of citizenship. For instance, if he is from Canada, they are supposed to refer to him as “a Canadian citizen.” The term “undocumented” should never be used to describe illegal presence in the United States. It has no basis in the U.S. Code.

Aliens here unlawfully should be far more concerned about being deported than they are about the names people call them, but advocacy groups have claimed that calling them “illegal aliens” causes serious harm.

La Clínica del Pueblo has launched a “No Human Being is Illegal” campaign. They were inspired by Elie Wiesel who said, “You who are so-called illegal aliens must know that no human being is illegal. … Human beings can be beautiful or more beautiful, they can be fat or skinny, they can be right or wrong, but illegal?”
Are these pejorative connotations coming from the people who use the term, or do they only exist in the minds of the people who dislike “illegal alien?” And when did it start being wrong to use that expression. Democrats used to refer to aliens here unlawfully as “illegal aliens” or “illegal immigrants.”
In any case, this debate fosters bad feelings on both sides and diverts attention from the threat of deportation, which is a much more serious matter.

Nolan Rappaport was detailed to the House Judiciary Committee as an executive branch immigration law expert for three years. He subsequently served as an immigration counsel for the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims for four years. Prior to working on the Judiciary Committee, he wrote decisions for the Board of Immigration Appeals for 20 years.